#especially if you're also disabled

[crippledasinfuckyou]

hey. if you're one of those people carrying something you're struggling with but that you absolutely cannot put down, i see you. if other people rely on you to live, meaning you cant take a break on helping them without putting them at risk, i see you. i understand you. i know how frustrating all those "its okay to take time for yourself!" posts are when taking time for yourself would cause immense suffering for others. im sorry that youre carrying that alone and that i cannot help you with it. but i see you. you are not the only person feeling this. your feelings are valid and do not mean you're a bad person, or doing a bad job. youre doing great. but im sorry you have to.

[uncanny-tranny]

The leftism/anticapitalism leaving people's bodies the zeptosecond you imply that disabled people who aren't "productive" still matter in society and need to be treated like intrinsic equals who have a place in this world:

[rjalker]

Dear people who aren't physically disabled who plan to write fantasy settings:

[ID: Several images taken from the Geordi La Forge yes and no meme format, with Geordi holding out a hand disapprovingly for the no section, then pointing in approval for the yes section.

The first image is the meme:

No: "Saying the existance of magic in your setting means there are no disabled people (this literally just means disabled people are killed. AKA eugenics)"

Yes: "Having disabled people who use magical mobility aids and other assistive devices. Realizing that someone is still disabled even if their prosthetic arm is made of magic instead of plastic."

This is followed by four more panels of yes section:

"Geordi la Forge is still literally disabled. His visor helping him does not erase his disability and make him magically abled."

"Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender is still literally disabled even though her Earthbending helps her. It does not make her disability ~magically~ go away."

"Having your disability be accomodated does not mean the disability goes away. Having a prosthetic hand, even one that's made of magic, does not mean you're not disabled."

"Magical mobility aids do not mean disabled people don't exist. It just means they use magical mobility aids instead of plastic or metal ones. A limb made of magic is still a prosthetic even if it's made of the soul of the universe instead of plastic and metal."

Then another no panel: "'There's no disabled people beacuse magic'".

Then one last yes panel: "'Magic helps disabled people in a variety of ways'".

End ID.]

This also applies to science fiction; just because Luke Skywalker's prosthetic hand is super advanced doesn't mean it's no longer a prosthetic, or that he's not disabled. Same with Darth Vader - just because he has a suit that lets him breathe and walk around doesn't mean he's not disabled. (And Star Wars' propensity for making the villains visibly disabled while the heroes disabilities get covered up by super advanced prosthetics is a topic that deserves its own post, especially with how ableist some of the authors of the books are. Troy Denning is especially ableist)

Edit:

Because people keep being fucking obnoxious and ableist in the tags, yes,,, motherfuckers, if you refuse to have disabled people in your setting, that does make you fucking ableist. If you say that the magic is used to cure all disabled people and that's why they don't exist, that's fucking eugenics.

You cannot ""cure"", more like remove all disabilities without fucking eugenics. Magically automatically destroying disabled fetuses (a very fucking popular trope!) is eugenics.

The only way to fucking "cure" autism is to fucking kill all autistic people, also known as eugenics!

What about people with PTSD? Do you just fucking brainwash them so they aren't traumatized anymore?

Do you force all Deaf people to be able to hear? Do you force all blind people to be able to see? Do you force all anosmics to be able to smell?

Do you magically force everyone with a speech impediment to speak to your standards?

Do you force everyone born with bodily or facial differences to live up to your fucking standard of beauty?

You cannot fucking say "disablities don't exist in this universe because magic cures everything" without inherently saying that eugenics exists in your fucking universe.

Not all fucking disabilities need a cure. If you ""cured"" my autism I'd just be fucking dead. You'd literally just be changing me into what you think is fucking acceptable.

Stop fucking arguing in defence of ableists on my fucking post so you can pretend that eugenics has never been written about in magical settings when it is extremely fucking prevalent.

And while we're fucking at it, let your gods damned characters become disabled over the course of their story, and call them disabled within the fucking story. I don't care if they're a robot. I don't care if they have magic. Not all fucking damage can be fixed. Curses exist. Hardware can go out of fucking date and no longer be manufactured anywhere.

Let your characters become disabled and do not magically fucking cure them back to brand new every single time they get hurt. The only thing you accomplish by doing that is destroying any chance of ever having stakes.

No, "magical healing leaves scars on the mind from the memory of the injuries though!!!!" is not fucking good enough. Let your characters have scars. Let them become disabled. Stop being fucking ableist cowards.

Edit number fucking 2:

No, motherfuckers, you do not get to comment "if the disability was caused by magic it's not ableist to cure it with magic". You are the ableist this post is about. Shut the absolute fuck up, stop treating being disabled as the worst possible outcome, and just admit you're a fucking ableist. If you don't want your characters to become disabled, then don't fucking make them disabled.

[ID: The Garfield "you are not immune to propaganda" meme, now edited to read:

"If your first thought upon reading this post is, 'Oh, but it's okay to magically cure disabilities caused by magic!' Congrats…you are the exact sort of ableist jackass this post is about."

End ID.]

Edit number fucking 3:

Autistic people exist! People who are born with disabilities exist! You cannot create a setting where disabled people do not exist because we're all "cured" or "fixed" and not inherently say that you are killing disabled people as soon as they're born, or fucking aborting us as soon as you figure out we'd be born disabled! That's fucking eugenics!

There is no way to "cure" autism without eugenics! There is no way to "cure" people with body differences without eugenics! There is no way to make disabled people nonexistant in your setting without eugenics! Thinking you can and should "cure" and "fix" all disabilities IS EUGENICS!

Also:

[ID: A character shouting at the camera, now edited to read: "Shut up about Dungeons and Dragons! Shut up about Dungeons and Dragons! If the rules of Dungeons and Dragons are ableist, then fucking change them! It is your fucking personal responsability to be a better person than your bigoted society wants you to be!". End ID.]

[ID: White text on a dark brown background with white and black borders around the edges, that reads:

"I don't fucking know or care about Dungeons and Dragons.

This post is not about Dungeons and Dragons.

Do not fucking throw the rulebook of Dungeons and Dragons at me like it's some sort of 'Gotcha!'.

You will literally just be blocked like the rest of the ableist assholes who've already tried it.

If you play dungeons and dragons, it's your responsability to make your games not be ableist, even if it means breaking the rules.".

End ID.]

I do not fucking care what the ableist rules are in Dungeons of Dragons. Do not fucking throw ableist rules for a game I have never and will never play at me on a post I made so that people could learn how to make their settings less ableist. If the rules in Dungeons and Dragons are ableist, then fucking change them. If you don't want to change them, then stop fucking playing an ableist game.

Disabled people deserve to see ourselves represented in fiction just like everyone else, without any fucking requirements that we be "cured" or "fixed" before the story ends.

How the fuck would you feel if a trans and gay character's whole story revolved around going on a quest to become straight and cis, did so, and only then was allowed to live happily ever after?

Why do you fucking think suggesting people write stories about disabled people going on a quest to be cured because it's the only way they'll ever be happy is any less fucking offensive?

Also:

This post is NOT a place for you to talk about how disabled people in fiction should have the option of curing their disabilities. It's just not. That's the fucking default for this society. That is not a revolutionary concept. It's not novel. We fucking know this society wants us gone. A post about how disabled people deserve representation is not the place to talk about how "Well, actually, in fiction disabled people should be cured!" Like that's not the fucking universal default???????????

Edit #4:

Everyone needs to stop tagging this singing praise for Fullmetal Alchemist. A story that uses disability as a punishment and the characters are on a quest to cure their disabilities is not the amazing representation you're all claiming it is just because the character who is only disabled because of DIVINE PUNISHMENT uses prosthetics.

Read this post, and this one. Fullmetal Alchemist is a hell of a lot more ableist than you people are letting on.

guess what you can now find a PDF version of this post on the web archive.

Edit #5! August 23rd, 2023!

A) Everyone. Disabilities that can only exist in the magical setting are still disabilities.

Trying to cure the younger brother's magical disability of being a soul floating around in a magical suit of armour is, in fact, going on a quest to heal a disability!

It doesn't matter if the older brother doesn't want to get his limbs back when they're going on a quest to heal the younger brother's disability! Especially when they BOTH get magically healed at the end!

Magical disabilities that can only exist in that setting, but not real life, are still disabilities, and it's not okay to magically heal them either! What part of the Garfield meme on this post did you all choose to ignore?!

B) When you leave tags on a post you are reblogging, the original poster can see them! When you leave tags on this post, I can see them!

If you think this post is ""too aggressive"" then simply do not reblog it! Don't fucking tone police me on a post I've had to edit five times now due to the constant ableism people have been commenting since I made it!

I have been called the R slur by multiple people in response to this post! People have literally reblogged this post to defend eugenics abortions! You can't see these comments or replies anymore because I blocked the poster!

If you think minorities are being too aggressive by responding appropriately to bigotry, you're a bigot! And you should either not reblog the post at all, or at the very least, shut the fuck up and not tone police us!

Do not fucking put tags on this post complaining I'm being too aggressive! That's called tone policing and you're a bigot if you do it! Don't fucking do it on anyone else's posts either! They can see your tags too!

C) When I fucking say Harry Potter fans are banned from this post, yes, this means YOU!

Either stop supporting a billionaire who's literally using the profits from her bigoted shittily written books to fund REAL FUCKING GENOCIDE, or fuck off!

By continuing to support the Harry Potter series, you are literally giving JK Rowling free fucking advertising! You are encouraging more people to read the series and watch the movies, spending more money and giving her more fucking money with which to LITERALLY SHAPE A COUNTRY'S LAWS TO COMMIT GENOCIDE. She is literally fucking fighting to make being trans illegal! She is literally fucking fighting to have even more of autistic people's rights taken away!

You cannot fucking be a fan of the Harry Potter series in 2023 and call yourself an ally to all the minorities harmed by JK Rowling and the bigotry baked into her shitty series!

Read another book! The Web Archive has tons you can read for free! Literally every single book on gutenberg.org/ is free! Including audiobooks for some of them!

If you write Harry Potter fanfiction, simply fucking get rid of the names and identifiable features and start writing original fiction instead! It's literally free!

Not supporting a literal fucking genocidal billionaire costs LITERALLY NOTHING! And if you refuse to fucking stop supporting JK Rowling, which is what you are doing when you support the Harry Potter series and squeal over her OCs, you are not an ally to any fucking minority! No! Not even if you're trans yourself!

= = =

Edit again Nobember 28th 2023 because this comment is just. such a perfect example for all of you that think this doesn't happen.

butter-whore2 said, two hours before this edit:

kind of a fan of tumblr's slightly more algorithmically elements for reminding me of the hell's other people construct for themselves but this one hits like five of the boxes. How do people do this to themselves? it's such a bizarre way to act over media I genuinely do not believe is capable of stirring an emotional response the metaphysics of disability here are unintentionally really funny but disability is not a coherent ontological framework, it's a vague descriptor for literally thousands of different things none of which lend themselves to categorizing Moralizing over fiction is incredibly lame.

Liking harry potter is also incredibly lame, it's not morally wrong nor transphobic and you do not get to decide that lol. people literally do get "cured" of their disabilities all the time, many of them have a positive experience in doing so. this is not what eugenics is.

the anti abortion stuff lol

Literally how do you live like this? you guys don't even read real books I don't get it.

Archived version of the comment for posterity.

So yeah, lofl, block this fucker.

[agendercryptidlev]

Some folks online really need to get it into their heads that ableist bigotry is still ableist bigotry even when directed at a shitty person.

[puppydolled]

isn't it really cool every time it tries to engage with intellectual disability topics online out of some semblance of community it gets told it's not actually ID isn't it cool how every time it's tried to relate it instead gets told to fuck off by other people with the exact same shit going on for the exact same reason until it has to try very hard to not just start crying

[reasonsforhope]

Crowdsourcing a question

Okay totally personal post here because, now that search engines suck, my research is failing me. So I'm crowdsourcing my question about the residential care work industry!

Hoping at least some of my followers have experience in/with the industry and some intel on this:

Actual question: How common is it for jobs in residential care work (residential centers, btw, not home care) to actually have two people on the night shift? vs. just saying they always have two people on the night shift in interviews and their official policies, and actually it's not true?

Because my current job was, it turns out, apparently totally lying about "you'll never be on shift alone with clients" at orientation (when it comes to the night shift, anyway). Which, holy fucking safety issues, Batman!

Suffice to say this was a very fun thing to find out like three days before my first regular shift

So, I'm thinking realllll hard about switching companies, and I'm trying to figure out if I could expect to actually have a coworker at a different company, or if it's like an open secret in the field that actually, basically all the night shifts end up being solo shifts, because the industry is so chronically understaffed or w/e

[giantkillerjack]

Uh-oh! You are like, SOOO awkward!!

You're so awkward that it is occasionally mildly uncomfortable for people!

You're so awkward that sometimes people are confused by you and then there are awkward silences!

You're so awkward ...... that ultimately no one is harmed!!

Oh damn!!! What a vile crime you have committed! What an unforgivable thing it is to make a fellow human briefly confused!

Why, if *I* were ever briefly confused and kind of uncomfortable as a result, I'd be devastated.... by the absolute net zero change in my happiness and health! - From which I might never recover!! Yes indeed! No punishment can ever be enough for you!!

So you better absolutely hate yourself for it.

Better be SO MEAN to yourself about every single missed social cue so you don't forget your horrible crime! Meaner than you'd ever dream of being to someone else for the same thing! This is YOUR responsibility!

You need to show the world that you KNOW you are bad by punishing yourself constantly! After all, think of all the people who BENEFIT from you punishing yourself! - No, really! Think about it! Think about who benefits from your pain.

Think of alllllll the definitely-good people that your definitely-necessary self-torment definitely helps! I mean, you can't just cut off their definitely-life-sustaining supply of your suffering, right?? Sure, everyone else has a breaking point, but you're probably the only person in human history who doesn't, right? Best not to question it probably. Sure, it's a symptom that billions of people with trauma have had, but who knows? You could be a one-in-seven-billion exception. Anything's possible!

Instead, better just accept that idea that bullies carry like guns in holsters - the idea that people who have trouble with social cues deserve to suffer. Better carry on the burden they placed on you until you drop. Aid the cause of the callous by enforcing shame and suffering upon yourself extra hard; try your best to do their work for them. They're very busy.

Better not recognize that you need patience and kindness to heal from your trauma. Better not find out that it was trauma rather than personal weakness filling your head with self-hating thoughts. Better not find out it wasn't your fault.

Better not find out that awkwardness is not inherently harmful or unkind, and, in fact, the people who act like it is *are the ones enacting harm and being cruel.*

Better not get righteously angry when you realize just how much unnecessary damage this has done to you. After all, if you get mad, you might realize you deserve better. You might even feel brave enough to DEMAND better! You might build boundaries that keep you safe! You might make other people think they deserve to feel safe too! And we obviously can't be having that, so...

Better not show yourself even a little kindness a little bit at a time.

Better not make a habit out of it after all that practice.

Better not get confident.

Especially if you can't first wipe out every trace of awkward. (And you probably never will. Because people who experience absolute social certainty at all times tend to be insufferable assholes that enforce the status quo. And you just don't have the stock portfolio for that.)

Better not be confident and awkward because then you might confuse and delight people

- you might accidentally end up making other people feel less shame for their social difficulties

- you might make isolated, traumatized, and shy people feel like they deserve to be included in social situations

- you might even make them feel they can be themselves around you

- you might start loving the effect you have on a room

- you might enjoy conversations more

- you might forgive yourself and bounce back from shame more easily and frequently

- you might come to enjoy some of those moments of harmless confusion you cause because NOBODY expects the Confident Awkward, and that can genuinely be an advantage in social situations

- you might stop apologizing so much.

- you might find that socializing is like a video game: it requires practice but also a safe space for it to be fun and positive.

Or if you can't become assertive and confident, better not remain awkward and shy and quiet, and then love and forgive yourself anyway!

Why, it would be carnage!!

In either scenario, you run the risk of finding out that it's not your fault that safe spaces full of kind people can be really hard to find, create, and nurture. You could end up building a skillset that helps you do those things if you're not careful!

If you start giving yourself even the tiniest amount of grace at a time, you will find that you've accessed a gateway drug with extreme long-term side effects:

- You might realize that it was never your fault that it took so long to like yourself.

- You might realize that you were always worth talking to, even when you didn't like yourself and communication felt impossibly difficult.

- You might realize that you'll still be worth talking to even if communication becomes harder as you age and/or experience disability.

- You might come to know that you deserve to be heard even on bad days when words come slow and blurry.

You might discover that you were always deserving of kindness, first and foremost from yourself.

So. As you can see, it's FAR too much of a risk to start granting your awkward self free pardons for your many heinous and harmless crimes. Better to just leave it there.

[basuralindo]

every ounce of kindness and understanding leaves my body the second my breathing is restricted. if my asthmatic ass finds you smoking at a bus stop I want you dead and I mean that

[doberbutts]

I just saw your post about how testosterone has helped your disability tremendously, which if I remember correctly is hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (but maybe I’m wrong). I’m agender and have been considering early menopause to help with my abundance of menstrual health issues, but if t helped your hEDS too that makes me really want to consider it further. If this is too private you absolutely don’t have to answer it but I’d love to know more as a fellow disabled person.

It's POTS actually :) though POTS is highly comorbid with hEDS and I *am* hypermobile, to a degree that I made my physical therapist wince with how easily I can assume positions that should noooooot be possible without pain when I was in recovery due to my car accident. She actually asked me if I have EDS and I said well I have POTS so... not officially but is it possible sure I guess.

So no, I do not have hEDS. But also yes I might have hEDS. Schroedinger's diagnosis.

No, testosterone helped my POTS symptoms disappear to almost nothing. This is at least partially because POTS does not get along with estrogen ans menstrual cycles, and taking testosterone lowered the estrogen in my body and also stopped my menstural cycle. Don't get me wrong, I still have some symptoms, but they are dramatically improved. I can do all sorts of things I used to not be able to.

There is... a bit of debate whether I have POTS at all. But I do have MCAS and, as said, I'm hypermobile, so very likely yes POTS is very likely. But with my NCAH diagnosis, it's equally possible that I *do not* have POTS, because NCAH also causes weird changes to your vasovagal response and your autonomic nervous system. In other words, do I have POTS AND NCAH... or do I just have NCAH?

Personally I don't really care because adding testosterone fixed the symptoms way better than anything the POTS meds were doing so w/e, if it works it works.

It's "makes you intersex and sometimes gay disease but also you faint a lot and your body *really* sucks at handling stress disease". To be fair the classic form of CAH can just outright kill you if not well controlled. Nonclassic CAH by comparison sometimes still tries really hard but is less likely to do more than give you some serious medical trauma.

So like. Am I fainting because my body doesn't know how to handle stress which triggers a response of my autonomic nerve and because my adrenal glands are too busy making androgens to give me some fucking cortisol to communicate with my autonomic nerve, the thing guesses wrong and I hit the ground as my body attempts the biology version of "have you turned it off and then back on again"? Or am I the unluckiest fucker on the planet and I have two annoyingly underdiagnosed but much more common than we thought disorders which both hate estrogen and make me faint a lot?

Or, bonus, since POTS joins PCOS in the "disorder named for a symptom that's not even diagnostuc criteria and no one actually knows what causes it" family, is what we're calling "POTS" actually a group of symptoms that has a wide range of causes and my cause for my own symptoms IS NCAH? Who knows 🤷‍♂️

[uncanny-tranny]

Blessing of the knitter/crocheter: may your hands never have cuts, bruising, sores, hangnails, or any other nuisance that would make your craft painful. May your hands and wrists never ache 🪷💛

[imwritesometimes]

currently wrestling with 'this looks too childish, having all these little hello kitty figurines all over my pc case and putting any more stuff in my car would be tasteless' and 'WHIMSY BITCH! WHIMSY! IT'S STILL ALL SMALL! IT'S CUTE! WHIMSY!'

[femboykaz]

I love you SoC artists and writers who don't feel the need to make Kaz "ugly" in their work

I love you SoC artists and writers who let Kaz be seen as attractive by characters other than just his close friends in their work

I love you SoC fans who don't just brush off and dismiss the idea of Kaz being considered Hot with regard to his physical appearance

I love you people who let the visibly disabled character be seen as attractive and desirable (without fetishizing or objectifying or having it be "in spite of xyz" or "attractive.... for someone who's xyz")

[greencarnation]

I'm always gonna point to this because do you really think it's gonna stop at Gaza? Do you really think they're not gonna come for you?

[tiger-moran]

Length of time between filling in an assessment form and a 'work capability assessment' interview being forced on you: 6 weeks

Length of NHS waiting list for an assessment for a condition that makes you unable to work: 3 years minimum

[llatimeria]

Just finished The Santaroga Barrier by Frank Herbert (my dad likes to play audiobooks in the car on trips) and I didn't like it much (and there's quite a bit of Yikes in it, because frank herbert and the 1960s in general,) but the aspect I found most interesting was the concept of like. A world's subconscious desire to kill The Other.

In the book an investigator visits a small cultish town in order to investigate it for a market study after a few other researchers mysteriously died. he gets into a frightening number of "accidents" while he's there (like the former investigators) and starts believing that there was a conspiracy among the townsfolk and all of them were intentionally trying to murder him.

tl;dr, it turns out it actually was a subconscious yet intense phobia/hatred they had of The Outside they had as part of their personal traumas, childhood indoctrination into their local cult, and the LSD-like drug they were constantly on. They didn't mean the investigator any harm, if anything they were extremely welcoming, kind, well-meaning people, but this background radiation of fear and rage kept making them accidentally do things to kill him - mixing up insecticide and spices in his food, gas fumes being pumped in his hotel room after a botched maintenance job, a torn carpet tripping him off the railing of the balcony, and Many Other subtle attempts on his life that he just happened to avoid by sheer chance.

But all the townsfolk don't really think anything of it - the town doctor, especially skeptical, "diagnoses" him as "accident-prone" until the investigator begs and pleads with him for days after several brutal accidents in a row, and only then does the doctor start believing him but even then only comes up with the theory that all of this supposed malice towards the investigator is "subconscious" - later shown to likely be correct when the investigator himself, after overdosing on their special drug, "accidentally" shoves his colleague off a roof, killing him, but the investigator physically cannot see it as anything but an accident anymore. it simply doesn't reach his mind that he killed a former friend of his. it was just an accident. he just fell, all on his own.

the idea of A Town That Wants To Kill You, But It's Nothing Personal resonated with me from the perspective of being a disabled person, especially one in a generally welcoming, accepting environment. when you're disabled, not a lot of people will come to you bearing their ableism between their teeth. They'll be nice, insensitive maybe, but nice, and are often outwardly willing to accomodate you. But they also stick out their leg as you're walking along to trip you. They'll apologize, and you'll maybe even believe it, even though to you, from your perspective, it was obviously an attempt to harm you. You excuse it once, maybe twice, but after a point, you realize that this world, this community you have entered, is actively hostile towards you and everyone like you. so you start screaming it to the rooftops. you tell authorities that the world wants to hurt you, but they begin affixing labels to you like "paranoid" or "anxious". they know no one actually has it out for you, personally, after all. that would be ridiculous.

but you still keep getting tripped down the stairs. the rat poison and the sugar at your favorite coffee shop still keep getting mixed up, but only when it's your order. in the hospital, recovering from your previous "accidents", a nurse will still accidentally pump you full of saline instead of medicine.

after a point, doesn't the fact that all of these are "accidents", and that no one WANTS to kill you, just... stop mattering a little bit? Yeah, no one wants to hurt you, but they just keep doing it. They keep making stupid little mistakes. They know everyone like you who has visited their community has died or been seriously injured under suspicious circumstances, but the idea that they, themselves, could be a little bit at fault just doesn't even register to them. they don't even consider that they might have to change their ways in order to protect people like you. After all, you can't prepare for every "freak accident". Even when the solution could be as simple as "stop putting rat poison next to the sugar", every time it happens to you, or a person like you, it's just an "accident", that no one "meant" any harm, and "nothing could be done".

it doesn't cross their mind that a string of unfortunate accidents ceases to be accidents, but serious negligence. it can't cross their mind, because they're not the victims here. they only even begin to acknowledge something might be wrong when the victims are screaming in their face, day after day. even then, they come to the conclusion that even if you're right, and the community does want to kill you because you are Other, they won't immediately see anything wrong with that. To Them, the answer is clear as day: just become one of Them, and you'll be safe. They take care of their own.

[gynecologistmsfrizzle]

sick and fucking tired of abled people wanting me to hold their hand and reassure them we can still be friends if they don’t wear masks. fuck you. don’t you dare ask me “is it okay if i keep my mask off?” you KNOW the answer is no. you already know i don’t want your fucking covid because you have EYES and I’M WEARING A GODDAMN N95.

people only ever ask that question because they KNOW your response is going to be “oh, um, i don’t care...” bc responding any other way makes you look unhinged and demanding. nobody is ever gonna tell you to put a mask on. do you understand that? nobody is EVER gonna ask you to put a mask on, no matter how high fucking risk they are. “you can’t tell me what to do with my body” NONE OF US EVER WILL.

when you say “stop trying to force me to wear a mask,” what you are actually saying is “stop reminding me that my choice not to wear a mask is selfish and ableist, because that makes me feel bad about myself.”

the first point would be a fair request-- much as i think you should be masked, i sure don’t think anyone should hold you down and force it on you. but nobody is doing that.

the second point is not a fair request. kill us if you want. fine. i can’t stop you. but you will look us in the fucking eye when you pull the trigger.