Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".
Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"
And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".
Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.
At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.
So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!
Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!
Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!
Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.
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Friendly reminder that you should
Write that fic
Draw your OC
Redesign that blorbo
Plan that comic how you want
Create the content you want to see
Be cringe
Be free
The only thing that matters is you having fun! Not what others think!
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okay but you see sam has ALSO fallen for dean's act. sam also believes dean to be the macho, daddy's soldier, beer boobs cars guy he presents himself as. this is why sam makes fun of dean whenever he even lightly steps out of that mold and thinks it's harmless banter instead of attacking an insecurity. it's why he laughs when john talks down to dean in the early seasons and it's why he seems surprised when dean is more comfortable with himself in the later seasons. it's why he just scoffs but doesn't push it when dean puts up a front and refuses to talk about his emotions and just accepts whatever excuse he makes at face value. it's why he offers dean a strip club to make him feel better when cas dies. and this isn't his fault!! dean has spent a very long time perfecting this image in front of everyone and ESPECIALLY to sam because along with it comes safety and security and stability and the only person. who has consistently been able to see through it. is castiel
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Dp x dc twin au where Danny and Damian were in fact conjoined/siamese twins, but the most dangerous type - one head, two bodies.
Their early removal from talia being because their shape would not have allowed for natural birth, they were written off but talia begged for the chance to send them off in the lazarus pit.
By some bizarre miracle, before she turned to leave, two small bodies bobbed to the surface - identical in every way, except for the eyes. The previous blue eyes now split in two, one left, one right, and the new eyes, pit created, a bright green.
She took her child, her two children, and together, they survived.
Being removed prematurely, their early years were tough, but soon they blossomed into promising heirs for the league. In sync with every step, the closest of brothers, the league was certain the old fairy tale of twins being telepathic had been granted by the pit that separated them, the remnants of being born as one mind, one brain, one skull.
But then Danny had to flee, and leave his other half behind. Stretched by distance for the first time, the bond grew thin and stretched, and Damian grieved his brother as dead. When he started being sent on public missions, he hid his distinctive heterochromia, choosing the green in memory of the pit that had given him and his brother life.
Danny, hiding his pit aura in the ocean's worth that was Amity park, took to blue, the colour that he and Damian were born with.
Damian moves to Gotham, and continues to mourn his brother as dead, right until one day when he is twelve, when he learns what the death of your other half truly feels like.
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Their reunion is a thing of family legend. Violence runs hot in both bloodlines, ghosts are highly emotional and prone to fighting a the drop of a hat for bonding, playing, testing, every reason under the green sun. Their training and play often consisted of friendly spars, competitive spars, furious spars, venting spars. Both have been exposed to unhealthy amounts of ecto since before their birth.
There is a long, long minute of staring, before they rip themselves away and lunge at each other like wolves.
The bat family are horrified by their brutally efficient youngest suddenly barreling towards a clone (?) and trying to claw his throat open with his bare hands while openly sobbing.
It ends with them wrapped around each other crying into the others shoulder as their minds finally meet again and relax from the painful stretch for the first time in years.
But nobody else has any idea what to do.
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The whole "breasts shouldn't be politicized because the primary purpose of breasts is to feed babies!" can be a fine jumping-off point, but I really wish people thought deeper than that when we talk about the ways in which bodies are politicized and restricted.
Like, why's it that when we talk about breasts, they must have some Higher Purpose? It's true that breasts aren't inherently sexual, but they aren't valuable solely because they can potentially feed a baby. A human body doesn't have to serve a Higher Purpose in order for it to not be legislated against or policed, and I just wish people would remember it isn't always about babies, about other people, about anything else other than the people who have that body.
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i absolutely cannot believe people are trying to start discourse about whether nex benedict was actually nonbinary / whether it was okay for him to describe himself as nonbinary to some people if he didn’t actually identify that way as if he isn’t literally DEAD because he was KILLED. this is a MURDERED CHILD and these monsters are so busy getting mad at the possibility that he might have been a trans boy who described himself as nonbinary to his family because that was easier for them to take that they’re turning a CHILD who was MURDERED into fucking discourse. even when we die at the hands of cis people’s violence, our own community finds a way to make us the villains of the story.
and all of this bullshit on top of the ways that cis people are already trying to say our grief over his death is unjustified. all of this on top of people claiming he wasn’t murdered and speculating on other causes of death (i literally saw someone say he “clearly went home and took the coward’s way out” and i have never been more disgusted) or claiming that he started the fight as if any action on his part could’ve been enough to justify his death. i am haunted by the sound of his father screaming that his child was not filth because that is what people have been saying about this poor kid, that’s how cruelly his memory is being treated, and even the trans community can’t get it’s shit together enough to look past the stupid discourse and see the tragedy in front of us. did you all forget that it was supposed to be up to us to grieve him in the way he deserves when the rest of the world fails to care if people like him live or die? did you all forget that this child was our sibling, the future of our community, a life that we should have had the chance to know and treasure while he was still here but that we now have a responsibility to hold close to our hearts in his absence? nex’s life was precious and it was ended far too soon and if you truly believe that anything is more important than mourning his life and fighting for a world where no more trans people have to meet such an awful fate, you’re a traitor to this community and you do not deserve the place you occupy within it.
i’m so tired. i can’t even imagine how tired his family must be, to see the public treat the child they’re grieving so horribly, to see the world fail their baby again. leave him alone. he was already robbed of peace in life; the least you can do is let him finally have it in death.
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