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.
Supernatural trends following the passing of the CW sniper. Whilst no official confirmation was published regarding their death, Misha Collins made a statement regarding destiel and since he's still alive, we can conclude that the CW sniper is no more.
The Cross Roads 8 Supernatural convention is currently taking place [x]. As usual, things have been said. There was one statement however which caused the tag to trend and it was (unsurprisingly) by Misha Collins, in response to a question asked by our bravest soldier @sunglassesmish [x].
"If the CW wasn't so homophobic, Dean and Cas would've been balls deep for sure." [x] [x] [x]
Whilst this may not be the exact quote (I haven't been able to find a video yet), this was enough to cause a destiel revival. More things have happened, and people on Twitter are posting under #CR8 in case anyone's interested. Multiple Supernatural tags are trending there as well [x].
(VOLUME WARNING) Mandalore talking about his contribution of the Aztec death whistle sampled in 7-1 (and playing aformentioned instrument), dated Dec 21 '23
there's literally gonna be a new taylor swift album im so excited it's been like six years
(if you are one of the gatekeeping weirdos who only counts the albums taylor released during her lifetime as "real ts" this post is not for you, let people be excited, the machine was literally trained not just on her music but on her brainwaves so there is literally no discernible difference)
so i was reading lae'zel's character sheet and noticed that she had a dragonchess set but no proficiency with them and then a ghost started moving my hand like a ouija board until i had drawn this
anyway this is what the girlies get up to if u leave them at camp together