crpl-pnk:

crpl-pnk:

a culture fixated on sniffing out “fakers” to protect “real disabled people” inevitably harms every single disabled person within that culture & only maybe a relative handful of “fakers”, who are usually mentally ill or economically disadvantaged to the point of having no alternative. stop saying your skepticism is for my benefit. stop saying my oppression is for my benefit. yes the idea of people with no grasp of my struggle claiming it is infuriating & insulting beyond belief. yes that is also oppressive. but in practice, i’d rather a dozen able bodied people successfully pass themselves off as disabled than one disabled person die in poverty because they couldn’t “prove it” to an abled person’s content

setting aside the fact that People Die From This, just the impact of faker witchunting on the emotional wellbeing of disabled people is enough to make it inexcusable
i’ve heard someone crying, literally sobbing & vomiting from pain frantically promise me that they’re not exaggerating when i never indicated for a moment that i disbelieved them, because they’re so used to the accusation. i’ve heard someone in the aftermath of a seizure quietly mumble as they regained lucidity, “are you sure i’m not faking?”
i don’t know a single chronically ill person who hasn’t at one point or another seriously questioned if they were ever really that sick at all because we’ve been so brainwashed to challenge the validity of disability that we begin to doubt the reality of our own definitive lived experiences