I know. This is a very controversial topic right now but hear me out. Because I am disabled and I am frustrated with what this site has turned ableism into. Nothing more or less than a list of words to be avoided . Tumblr informs me that that is all I have to face and struggle with every time I leave the house. I really wish a simple list was all ableism was. I do. But Why aren’t we focusing on the real culprit here?
Ignorance. Ignorance that tumblr is spreading because they refuse to talk about the real issues. How about the unheard of concept that people with mental disabilities are not stupid! And you know what? Not one single time in all of these lists floating around have I seen someone say that. No, instead we are told that you should not use the word because the mentally disabled should find it hurtful and offensive. Excuse me? These lists have spread all across this site and back. Lists informing everyone that the first thing you should think of when you think of the mentally disabled are the taboo words “stupid” and “dumb”. And no one seems to understand how problematic that is. How you all have single handedly put that label on people by claiming to fight against ableism. Let me instead give you something new to think about. People with mental disabilities are NOT stupid and that word has NO place being used that way. Trying to turn it into a slur? That will never happen. It is a common part of our language. It’s not going away. All you have done is told people that they have a new set of words that should hurt them every time they hear it and made an association so that the first thought when someone hears that word is now the disabled, creating new prejudice and more ableism than before.
Why are you focusing on words instead of teaching that not everyone in a wheelchair is paralyzed? Every person who has ever needed a wheelchair knows all too well that this is a very serious problem that tumblr surprisingly shys away from. And what about the fact that just because you see a person walking in a store or down the street, you cannot assume they do not have a chronic and/or invisible illness? These are some mind blowing topics right? Things that might really educate some people about what ableism is help help limit the prejudice and fear that people face every single time they leave their house.
Ableism isn’t a list of words that some able bodied and minded people put together to inform the disabled what they should and should not find offensive. Ableism is maintaining ignorance and ignoring the real issues.
OH MY GOD THIS.
I would also be very happy if people who are new to the whole disability awareness thing could /not/ just transpose concepts from other oppressions, and look into the history or the movement first. There’s a decades long offline history of trying to normalise the use of disability aids, because everyone uses things to make life easier and those we use should also be considered normal!
I come on tumblr and see that normalisation we’ve been fighting for dubbed “appropriation”.
Reblogging again for this important added point about not misusing the term “appropriation” where it isn’t meant to be used.
I see this all the time with people who are interested in learning sign language being afraid to start because they think that their learning our language will somehow “appropriate” it from us or be offensive to us. Um, no. Us Deaf/deaf people who sign usually WANT more people to learn how to sign so it will be easier for us to communicate with more of the people around us. LEARNING SIGN LANGUAGE IS NOT A FORM OF APPROPRIATION.
This is bad enough when it comes from hearing people who are just interested in the language (whether ASL, in the U.S., or BSL in the UK, or whatever sign language in whatever country). But what is especially heart breaking is that I also see people who really NEED sign language for themselves hesitating to learn it because they’re so afraid of “appropriating” it from Deaf/deaf people. No. Look, if you have a speech impairment, or if you have motor processing or other issues, or for whatever reason cannot always rely on talking as a way to express yourself quickly and easily to others, then YES, you have EVERY right to learn sign language. I’m saying this as a Deaf/deaf person, okay? Please don’t allow hearing people who aren’t even members of the Deaf community scare you off from taking classes, or joining “Deaf events” where you can be around people who sign, or whatever. Please DO learn sign language. I still welcome your learning sign language partly for the selfish reason that it benefits me when more people can sign. But also partly because I want for YOU to have a better way to express yourself if it might help you. Because you HAVE A RIGHT to better communication.
Which brings me to another point: if you’re a non-disabled person, (and here I’m using the general “you”, not specific to one person) then, I’m sorry, but it’s really not appropriate for you to be deciding on our behalf what things are “ableist” or not. Instead of talking over disabled people and arguing why yet another 100 words needs to be added to the list of ableist words, how about doing some reading to learn about the ways that far more serious forms of ableism impact disabled people? For example, did you realize that, YES, some people DO commit hate crimes against disabled people? That disabled people are very disproportionately targeted for abuse, torture, and other violence? That accessibility barriers can often block us from accessing an education, or job opportunities we are qualified for, or using public transportation systems, or accessing basic health care services, and so on? Please go learn about THESE and consider ways to stop THESE forms of oppression. That would be a far more productive use of your time and energy.
Check out this blog post, which has a list of links you can explore to learn more about what ableism really means, besides just a list of words. This will lead you to a mix of academic, journalistic, and anecdotal sources. The anecdotal sources for the most part are written by people who have disabilities sharing their own first-hand experiences:
This is important. For a long time I was afraid of admitting there was something wrong with me, then I was afraid of admitting it had an impact on my life, then I was afraid of calling myself disabled. Because I was afraid of somehow becoming part of a community that society looks down upon.
I am a disabled person. I cannot function “normally” in everyday life, I have had to adapt to function. And that is okay. What’s not okay is that I’m afraid of telling family members who think being disabled is a dirty word. My family—who was so adamant my brother did not have a developmental disorder and so he did not receive the treatment he needed as a child—is ableist. I will not be accepted by them because I identify as what I am: a person with an invisible disability.
That is ableism.
That is what hurts disabled people.
Ignorance and fear. Not words. Access issues and challenges. Not appropriation. Judgement and arbitrary “rules” about disability. Not acceptance of who we are.
Reblogging yet again for yet more important commentary
With regard to the ‘stupid’ thing, I have heard some people saying that equating ‘stupid’ with cognitive disability is far more ableist than the word ‘stupid’ could ever be. But we’re few and far between and people don’t listen to us. We’re also supposedly insensitive to the suffering of people who’ve been called stupid for having a cognitive disability, or other words, etc. Hell, the word idiot is in my diagnostic papers – something I doubt the vast majority of people alive right now, of any diagnosis, could say – and I don’t think the word needs to be abolished. I also am aware that its use as an insult predates its use as a medical term, but the people who make the word lists don’t seem to want people to know that.
There’s also the fact that it’s ableist to expect everyone to memorize a list of words that is not okay, and then for each word, to memorize a list of substitute words that are okay. It’s ableist because lots of disabled people are partially or totally incapable of that. They say it’s easy. They all say it’s easy. And the few who don’t say it’s easy say everyone should try anyway. I’ll agree that there are certain words that should almost never be used. Retard is one, vegetable (when referring to a human being) is another. But some people would have you believe that stupid is just as bad, and to me that cheapens the definition of what a slur is. Hell, even crazy, which approaches a slur more closely than stupid does, isn’t quite a slur in most contexts.
And these word lists, they become shibboleths. A shibboleth is a word or phrase used to distinguish an in-group from an out-group, either through pronunciation or through knowledge of the word in general. And that’s more the real function of these word lists, than an attempt to not be ableist.
And when I see oppressions listed out, I’ll see a thoughtful discussion of every other form of oppression. And then they’ll get to ableism. And it’ll be, “Fighting ableism is about understanding why it’s bad to call people stupid.” And that enrages me because disabled people are incarcerated every day for being disabled, we are dying every day for being disabled, but ableism is all about words. And by focusing so hard on words, people are acting like the rest of this stuff isn’t even happening.
And people say it’s not happening. Especially people from other oppressed groups. “Nobody’s ever locked up for being disabled.” “Nobody’s killed for being disabled.” “Disabled people aren’t subject to genocide.” To which my response is basically WTF, WTF, and WTF. Hell, someone nondisabled studying what happens to disabled people coined a new term, eugenocide, to describe the way eugenics has played out for disabled people both in the past and present.
Oh yes and can’t forget the way, when people discuss eugenics, it’s entirely in terms of race and sometimes class, but never disability, even though ableism is the fundamental principle that the specific kinds of racism and classism found in the eugenics movement were based on. Similarly, ableism isn’t really that important to learn about according to most people, even though it holds a position at the heart of every single other kind of oppression out there, a conclusion many disabled people from many different backgrounds have come to, independently of each other, because it really is that obvious once you know what you’re looking at.(1)
It also just makes me feel ill sometimes… because disabled people are out there dying right now, in horrible ways, directly because of ableism. And most people, including most people who claim to be fighting oppression, don’t notice, don’t care, or both. And the entire idea that ableism is a list of words feeds into this idea that disabled people don’t face real oppression.
I mean, what if all you knew of classism was: “Don’t say poor (say bad instead), rude/crude (say impolite), mean (say unkind), low (I’m going to stop acting like a thesaurus now because I suck at this), coarse, vulgar, cruel, etc. because all of these things can be tied in with class on some level etymologically or directly, if you squint at them hard enough and tilt the paper to the side.”(2) Would you take classism seriously or believe that it kills people? And a lot of the ableist word list crap has less basis than the list of words I just used.
(1) And no, this is not “my kind of oppression is worse than your kind of oppression” nor is it “my kind of oppression is the worst in the world” nor is it “my kind of oppression is unique” nor any of the other knee-jerk reactions people have to hearing ableism is at the heart of every other kind of oppression.
What it means, is just that you can’t deal with any kind of oppression without dealing with ableism, because there is always some core belief about, or action towards, every oppressed group of people, that is ableist in nature. And if you don’t address the ableism you’ll never get anywhere much, you’ll just shift things around for other people to have to deal with.
It’s sort of like you can’t deal with homophobia without dealing with sexism, because sexism is built into core aspects of homophobia. Except ableism is built into core aspects of every major kind of oppression that exists. Try to find a kind of oppression that doesn’t have some core belief about the abilities and inabilities of the oppressed people in question. You won’t. I don’t know how ableism got so intertwined into everything. There are other oppressions that are intertwined like that (like homophobia and sexism) but I haven’t yet found another one where it’s intertwined across the board.
And also, this kind of intertwined is different, and deeper, than the only kind of intertwined I’ve seen SJ people deal with. Which is people dealing with multiple oppressions at once: Lesbians deal with sexism and homophobia at once, for instance. But lesbians dealing with sexism and homophobia at once, is very different from the fact that homophobia contains sexism (and, for that matter, ableism) at its core.
So when I talk about ableism being so deeply intertwined with all other oppressions, I’m not talking about the fact that there are disabled people facing other kinds of oppression at the same time, and the way these things interact. That’s important, but it’s not the same thing. I’m talking about something closer to the way IQ is used against people of color, to pick one example among many. You couldn’t have that situation without ableism, and you can’t address it properly without addressing ableism. You can pretend to address it, sure, in the way most oppressed groups pretend to address it – keep the ableism but distance your group from disabled people as much as possible. But that will never get rid of the problem.
And what angers me about this the most is that not only do people not see this, but when it’s pointed out to them, they find ways of ignoring it. Mostly by saying that disabled people are trying to claim that our oppression is special or something. When that’s not what we’re saying. We’re saying our oppression is bound up with all other oppressions in a very strange way. We didn’t create the situation, we don’t want the situation, but the situation exists. And not only do people ignore it, not only do people find ways of telling disabled people that we don’t know what we’re talking about, but people then turn around and say ableism is the least important kind of oppression if it’s really oppression at all. Which would be bad enough if it were just throwing disabled people under the bus, but it’s really throwing everyone under the bus, including the people who say it, and they don’t even know.
Also I’m oppressed in way more ways than disability. If it were really “my kind of oppression is special” wouldn’t I have done it with every kind of oppression I experience, not just one of them? Or is it that, due in part to ableism, people see me primarily as a disabled person and forget that I’m also dealing with sexism, homophobia, sizeism, transphobia, and classism on just as much a regular basis as ableism? So if I were going to declare “my kind of oppression” the worst kind, I would sort of… no I can’t even imagine it so I’m not going there.
(2) Please for the love of everything holy, do not start a “classist words we shouldn’t say” list based on my list here. That would miss the point in a spectacular yet horrible way.
This is a hugely long post, but a very important one. Even relatively good SJ often goes “Oppression works like this!” and overlays the same frame over everything rather than talking in difficult detail about how things actually work.
Client: Can you make our
website automatically download a virus to client’s computer so the client has
to buy our anti-virus?
His anti-virus is a .bat file
which “detects” all files with a name like virus.exe, trojan.exe and so on.
After I told him “no” he threatened me with a DDOS attack. I haven’t heard from
him since.
i wanna talk about this little segment of animation on peridot because i think it’s really great. a'ite so at the beginning of the ep here she’s having this breakdown right? peridot’s already infamous for her incredible facial expressions, and this segment is definitely no exception,,,
but what i love even more is how it’s expressed through her fingers, how such a unique design element is used so naturally and dynamically in her language.
i don’t know how exactly she moves them, but it’s clear they reflect something of her state of mind. peridot loves nothing if not order; keeping a bunch of little poles in a hand or otherwise functional arrangement all the time seems like a unnecessarily small thing to point out for that, until you look at how they behave when she’s not fully keeping control.
they go everywhere. she’s a mess. girl’s on her last desperate nerve here and it shows. she doesn’t even have them in a sensible arrangement until she deliberately gestures with them, and even then they’re way more loose in this scene than any before.
like she’s literally barely holding together.
it’s mildly interesting that she’s more collected [visually, at least] immediately after he last hope is extinguished, until she has to explain to steven about their shared fate.
it’s easy to see what she’s trying to do with her hands, just a general “throwing hands up in exasperation” gesture, but geez, at this point their arrangement barely resembles anything any more. and then this:
side note- i also think it’s cool how they managed to get her to simultaneously do like 3 different nervous gestures with one hand here; she’s just putting her fingers to use wherever they ended up.
even the hand that’s just idling as a hand is floating everywhere haphazardly
anyway my favorite part is this bit here,
it’s again easy to understand it simply as an “okay listen, kid” kind of gesture, but the way her fingers methodically reorganize back into hands as she inhales, it’s like she’s recomposing not only her stance, but her thoughts, both of which are conveyed awesomely through this deliberate “lining up and holding together” animation.
peridot has so many ways to be expressive and the crew utilizes them all so expertly and i love it. and i mean, this isn’t even touching how shelby rabara nailed every voice crack and anxious falter in peridot’s voice while all this is happening…
Even if they just breathe in the pollen. Or get it on their fur. They will fucking die. Do not do it.
SIGNAL BOOST THIS SHIT
I did not know this reblogging
“…
the most toxic household plants for cats is the common lily. In fact, eating as little as two or three leaves from the flowers can result in liver failure and, if left untreated, can have a fatal outcome for cats.” (Source: PetMD)
Please take care of your feline friends!
I dont have a cat but I’m sure some of my followers do!
(long post ahead, tw: drama and tw: harassment) This is going too far.
The artwork used on this site belongs to someone, whether they made it for themselves or for someone else as a commission. Just because “its on the internet/google” does not mean it’s free to use by anybody.
No one gives a shit if you gave “credit” (by saying they own nothing) you didn’t ask permission of the individual artists. And if you use doll makers/bases, don’t fucking claim them as your original characters and get pissy when someone makes a similar character??
^ why would anyone be jealous of stolen art?
Shelby-Rox in particular is the same kid who has been submitted here multiple times for general assholery, telling people to kill themselves over critique, steal art, making fake alt accounts to harass people, and pulling the suicide card whenever someone offends them, so on.
they also make heaps of alternate accounts to white knight themselves with, and think that it’s convincing enough for anyone to believe its TOTALLY a different person??
My friend was harassed by this kid because they politely asked her to take their art down from her site, seeing as the admin doesn’t give a shit about art theft either, then she accused my friend of stealing “her oc” and then told him to kill themselves?? wtf
-
This entire site and userbase in general is a ART THEFT FAIR, from deviantart, tumblr and even pixiv.. i hate to make a callout post, but this is the site, myfirstworld.com please be aware, i don’t want anyone finding their ocs renamed and used as someone else’s.. it’s basically the entire worlize drama again.
I am Silver Tongue, I am an artist. I have many characters and you can check out my art in the art tag. I occasionally practice witchcraft though I don't do anything too complicated. I am girl 2 and don't know what else to put here.
