Can we do that without the latent ableism that comes along with it, like the idea that if you can’t help people move couches then you don’t deserve anyone else’s help either?
This especially effects people with invisible disabilities, who are already viewed as lazy, but who also might be the most helpless when it comes to moving their own furniture.
Kevin and Tony would definitely move a sofa for a person with disabilities. No doubt in my mind. They’d still expect pizza and beer tho, that’s non-negotiable.
Cool thing about being disabled is you become the one who knows the people with a truck and a couple 20-year old children. Or the person who cuts hair for free. Or the person whose cousin does pro bono legal work for certain requests.
In short, you become the key connector in that network: the Guy Who Knows A Guy.
It sounds like you’re putting a lot of weight in your own experience and assuming every disabled person will have the same experience.
Maybe you or someone you know is disabled and is that connector who knows a guy. But projecting that and assuming every other disabled person will have that same advantage is a wild thing to do, and I’m surprised that more people don’t see through that.
I think it’s kind of ablist to assume a disabled person has nothing of value to offer, like if they can’t move a couch then they are excluded. “Moving a couch” could be anything, it could be filing taxes or cooking a meal. Disabled people are good at stuff too. I think it’s really weird for you to make this assumption.
I agree. Even if the task at hand really is moving a couch, coordinatin, organising, etc. are crucial contributions that dont require physical strength or ableness to do.
Honestly it’s both. Plenty of people with disabilities have plenty to offer. A lot actually don’t though, and they still deserve that helping hand.
A family aquatintance has some mental and physical disabilities. They’re just not going to be able to help in any way that isn’t superficial. And that’s okay. Their worth isn’t defined by their utility.
Attaching how worthwhile it is to help someone to their ability to provide a service inherently says the person who can’t isn’t worthy of help.
We should be good to people because it’s the right thing to do, not out of the expectation of a future repayment. More pragmatically, we should help based on the assumption that the other person would, and that if everyone acted like that the world would be better.
I think the other person read a bit much into it, but their base point isn’t wrong.
I find it wild that most people here can’t see through their own assumptions. Like, everyone else needs to examine their own biases. Not them though, they could never be biased. It shows such a lack of self-awareness on their part.
My dad had a prosthetic leg, and he bristled at some of the polite or accepting ways that people would talk about disability in a way that stuck with me because he explained it. Basically a dislike of “handicapable” or the notion that you “make up for it” in other ways. To paraphrase: “getting my foot cut off in a car accident didn’t come with some perk that balanced things out”.
I think a lot of the pushback you got came not from a place of rejecting that they could have a bias, but from the topic being broached as a confrontation of bias instead of an explanation of ignorance.
People, like the poster above, who are being conscientious according to their understanding will get indignant or frustrated when that’s met with an unmatched response.
Assuming positive intent colors implicit “positive abelism”, or other “positive -isms” that I’m personally less knowledgeable about, as unfamiliarity or ignorance rather than callousness or rudeness.
In those cases, the person is very unlikely to disagree or pushback if informed about their blind spot. The key part in their head was “disabled people are just as important”, sitting right next to “good people chip in and contribute”. So they respond to “disabled people can’t always contribute” with “disabled people are important!” phrased as "disabled people can contribute!”.
Addressing it as a bias against disabled people doesn’t fit because that part is correct. Need to address it at where the problem is: a misconception about the relationship between human worth, labor and utility.
Okay, that’s fine and all, but “brocialism” will never be enough because it depends so strongly on a person’s personal connection. It’s not “to each accord to their needs” it’s “to each according to their connections.”
If you don’t see how that disproportionally benefits and privileges in-groups then I don’t know how much clearer I can break it down for you. A socialist society needs mechanisms in place to take care of those who would be forgotten by “brocialism” alone.
Maybe the system works for autistic people who can grill, but what about autistic people who can spend two hours explaining the history of North Rhine-Westphalia or Star Trek lore or any other special interest? You think someone with a truck will view that as an equivalent exchange?
Mind you, I’m not saying their talents are worthless. I’m telling you my experience as a neurodivergent person that most people view these things as lacking value and will marginalize anyone whose contributions consist exclusively of talents that most people consider worthless.
Assuming every autistic person can grill or contribute something that neurotypical people value as having worth is wrong because it marginalizes those who fall outside of that limited group, and because it reinforces the system and the idea that people need to be able to contribute something deemed valuable before they deserve to receive help.
And if you can’t see how that disadvantages the people whose disabilities are the most severe, then I don’t know what will get through to you.
Show me one part of humanity’s development that did not involve social connection. You, as a human being are part of an unbroken chain of social connections spanning back so far that there isn’t even a word for how many generations it is.
Maybe the system works for autistic people who can grill, but what about autistic people who can spend two hours explaining the history of North Rhine-Westphalia or Star Trek lore or any other special interest? You think someone with a truck will view that as an equivalent exchange?
You’re still focusing too much on the minutiae of the reference not the meaning behind it, its not about the grilling the same way it’s not about the truck, the same way small talk isn’t about the weather.
To use your own words
I don’t know how much clearer I can break it down for you
ITS ABOUT MAKING A CONNECTION WITH ANOTHER HUMAN BEING AND DISCOVERING THAT NOT EVERYONE IS A CUNT.
I have fully ND mates, who have special interests that they have built communities around. One of whom was genuinely incapable of spending time out in public without being in full body attack mode after less than an hour is now entirely able to spend an entire day out at a festival AND maintain enough social battery to continue spending time with friends well into the evening. Something they have fully admitted to me would not be possible five years ago.
the idea that people need to be able to contribute something deemed valuable before they deserve to receive help.
Some people enjoy conversation. Some people are bad at using maps. Some people need to be able to speak out their thoughts aloud to even begin to analyse them and require a rubberduck that can ask questions.
“Something deemed valuable” can have many meanings to many people, but you’ll never find out what they deem valuable by mentally labelling them as a degenerate that should not be interacted with the second they say something you disagree with.
My partner has disabilities and so they do not help lift the sofa. But they are a lot better at driving a manual truck than I am, so with a few pillows and adaptations in the driver’s cab that is what they do when someone needs a sofa moved. Some disabilities prevent you from driving the truck too, but it’s important as a group of sofa movers to make sure that everyone has something they can fulfill, even if that means planning the move. That can be incredibly helpful.
I think we all understand you are angry and respect that (I hope).
But saying it’s nice and good when people are helpful doesn’t imply that peiple who can’t help are not nice and good. There’s some kind of logical fallacy in that interpretation of it.
Exactly. You don’t, and you’re unwilling to hear perspectives that conflict with your own, so you never will. That’s only reinforcing the erasure of already-invisible marginalia. The whole point of what I’m saying.
You better come with some jokes then. When I’m moving some bulky furniture upstairs and really not having a good time, sometimes a well-timed joke is exactly what we need to drop it and injure ourselves.
Okay, while you’re jerking off the dicks driving big-ass little-dick trucks, I guess I’ll try being nicer to those assholes while they honk their horns at pedestrians, double-park or park on crosswalks, and all that other shit that they do and everyone knows they do because they’re doing it in big-ass trucks and it’s not subtle.
Especially the ones rolling coal and flying trump flags. Should I try to be less of a dick to them to? I don’t want to be included in whatever they’ve got going on. I certainly would never ask one to help move furniture. Their trucks are only for show anyway…
Also, I don’t know what makes you say standing up for pedestrians, disabled people, and other invisible or marginalized groups makes me “self-victimizing.”
Do I find myself in some of those groups? Sure. But telling people they can’t stand up for a marginalized group if they include themself in that group is a very insidious way to put down any resistance to fascism.
Yes, of course. You’re so special and woke and this is such wonderful resistance you’re doing! Everybody needs to listen to your miserable bitching about how awful you know everyone really is, and if they don’t then it’s fascism.
Lmao, seriously are you like bpd or something? This is such attention seeking woe is me bullshit you’re pulling here, it’s really gross to watch.
Oh fuck off. The next time you hear people talk about racism or sexism you should respond the same way you’re doing now and see what that gets you.
Maybe ableism isn’t as “hot” of a topic or whatever, it’s not as sexy to discuss it as other forms of oppression, but if anything that just goes to show the disabled are even more marginalized, since apparently no one has their back and it’s such “attention seeking woe is me bullshit” to critique ableism, according to you.
And don’t pretend you’re not ableist, you literally just stigmatized mental illness, specifically borderline personality disorder, as if people struggling with that don’t already struggle enough with social rejection and low self-esteem. Genuinely, fuck you.
Of course I’m in pain. Putting aside a lifetime of social rejection, ostracization, ridicule, and derision for being different (and therefore incomprehensible to the normies who fear and hate anything they don’t understand), I’ve spent the last few years watching my country devolve into fascism.
And these “Kevins” in the world who drive these big trucks, and are willing to help out their neighbors, are not always the “good people” that this post portrays them as. Their neighbors might call them “good ole boys,” but there’s a dark side to it. Those Kevins often voted for trump, support the fascist GOP and the capitalist order, often hate anyone they view as too different.
They might accept the OOP even though he’s Asian, but if he was Black or Hispanic it might be a completely different story. If he was gay or trans it might be a completely different story. Kevin isn’t some benevolent altruist who will help anybody and everybody. I know these types of people. They might seem nice on the surface, if you’re the type of person they don’t exclude. But in order to keep their approval, if you have it in the first place, you’d better not say anything that might tip them off that you’re a liberal. You’d have to laugh off the casual racism, sexism, homophobia that they weave into nearly every conversation.
I see through this because it’s the type of people I grew up around. I’m telling you, they’re not nice people, even if they seem like it to their friends and neighbors. Anybody can treat their own friends and in-groups with kindness. Even fascists and oligarchs help their own when given an opportunity. That doesn’t make them good people.
Can we do that without the latent ableism that comes along with it, like the idea that if you can’t help people move couches then you don’t deserve anyone else’s help either?
This especially effects people with invisible disabilities, who are already viewed as lazy, but who also might be the most helpless when it comes to moving their own furniture.
Kevin and Tony would definitely move a sofa for a person with disabilities. No doubt in my mind. They’d still expect pizza and beer tho, that’s non-negotiable.
Cool thing about being disabled is you become the one who knows the people with a truck and a couple 20-year old children. Or the person who cuts hair for free. Or the person whose cousin does pro bono legal work for certain requests.
In short, you become the key connector in that network: the Guy Who Knows A Guy.
It sounds like you’re putting a lot of weight in your own experience and assuming every disabled person will have the same experience.
Maybe you or someone you know is disabled and is that connector who knows a guy. But projecting that and assuming every other disabled person will have that same advantage is a wild thing to do, and I’m surprised that more people don’t see through that.
It’s less an advantage and more a necessity. You either become the person who knows people who can do things or certain things don’t get done.
Yes, you’re right about that. And that’s precisely why people who can’t form those connections are at such a disadvantage.
I think it’s kind of ablist to assume a disabled person has nothing of value to offer, like if they can’t move a couch then they are excluded. “Moving a couch” could be anything, it could be filing taxes or cooking a meal. Disabled people are good at stuff too. I think it’s really weird for you to make this assumption.
I agree. Even if the task at hand really is moving a couch, coordinatin, organising, etc. are crucial contributions that dont require physical strength or ableness to do.
Honestly it’s both. Plenty of people with disabilities have plenty to offer. A lot actually don’t though, and they still deserve that helping hand.
A family aquatintance has some mental and physical disabilities. They’re just not going to be able to help in any way that isn’t superficial. And that’s okay. Their worth isn’t defined by their utility.
Attaching how worthwhile it is to help someone to their ability to provide a service inherently says the person who can’t isn’t worthy of help.
We should be good to people because it’s the right thing to do, not out of the expectation of a future repayment. More pragmatically, we should help based on the assumption that the other person would, and that if everyone acted like that the world would be better.
I think the other person read a bit much into it, but their base point isn’t wrong.
Thank you! You phrased it better than I could.
I find it wild that most people here can’t see through their own assumptions. Like, everyone else needs to examine their own biases. Not them though, they could never be biased. It shows such a lack of self-awareness on their part.
My dad had a prosthetic leg, and he bristled at some of the polite or accepting ways that people would talk about disability in a way that stuck with me because he explained it. Basically a dislike of “handicapable” or the notion that you “make up for it” in other ways. To paraphrase: “getting my foot cut off in a car accident didn’t come with some perk that balanced things out”.
I think a lot of the pushback you got came not from a place of rejecting that they could have a bias, but from the topic being broached as a confrontation of bias instead of an explanation of ignorance.
People, like the poster above, who are being conscientious according to their understanding will get indignant or frustrated when that’s met with an unmatched response.
Assuming positive intent colors implicit “positive abelism”, or other “positive -isms” that I’m personally less knowledgeable about, as unfamiliarity or ignorance rather than callousness or rudeness.
In those cases, the person is very unlikely to disagree or pushback if informed about their blind spot. The key part in their head was “disabled people are just as important”, sitting right next to “good people chip in and contribute”. So they respond to “disabled people can’t always contribute” with “disabled people are important!” phrased as "disabled people can contribute!”.
Addressing it as a bias against disabled people doesn’t fit because that part is correct. Need to address it at where the problem is: a misconception about the relationship between human worth, labor and utility.
What I think is ableist is that you would try to pretend that disabled people don’t get excluded due to society devaluing the things they can offer.
It’s also ableist for you to suggest that a disabled person should be expected to file someone else’s taxes if they need help moving furniture.
You just gave a master class in missing the point.
The same way it isn’t about the couch, it isn’t about the taxes
To each according to their means, to each according to their needs was
Or in brocialism terms “Autism be damned my boy can work a grill”
Every metaphor breaks down if you read it at face value
Okay, that’s fine and all, but “brocialism” will never be enough because it depends so strongly on a person’s personal connection. It’s not “to each accord to their needs” it’s “to each according to their connections.”
If you don’t see how that disproportionally benefits and privileges in-groups then I don’t know how much clearer I can break it down for you. A socialist society needs mechanisms in place to take care of those who would be forgotten by “brocialism” alone.
Maybe the system works for autistic people who can grill, but what about autistic people who can spend two hours explaining the history of North Rhine-Westphalia or Star Trek lore or any other special interest? You think someone with a truck will view that as an equivalent exchange?
Mind you, I’m not saying their talents are worthless. I’m telling you my experience as a neurodivergent person that most people view these things as lacking value and will marginalize anyone whose contributions consist exclusively of talents that most people consider worthless.
Assuming every autistic person can grill or contribute something that neurotypical people value as having worth is wrong because it marginalizes those who fall outside of that limited group, and because it reinforces the system and the idea that people need to be able to contribute something deemed valuable before they deserve to receive help.
And if you can’t see how that disadvantages the people whose disabilities are the most severe, then I don’t know what will get through to you.
Show me one part of humanity’s development that did not involve social connection. You, as a human being are part of an unbroken chain of social connections spanning back so far that there isn’t even a word for how many generations it is.
You’re still focusing too much on the minutiae of the reference not the meaning behind it, its not about the grilling the same way it’s not about the truck, the same way small talk isn’t about the weather.
To use your own words
ITS ABOUT MAKING A CONNECTION WITH ANOTHER HUMAN BEING AND DISCOVERING THAT NOT EVERYONE IS A CUNT.
I have fully ND mates, who have special interests that they have built communities around. One of whom was genuinely incapable of spending time out in public without being in full body attack mode after less than an hour is now entirely able to spend an entire day out at a festival AND maintain enough social battery to continue spending time with friends well into the evening. Something they have fully admitted to me would not be possible five years ago.
Some people enjoy conversation. Some people are bad at using maps. Some people need to be able to speak out their thoughts aloud to even begin to analyse them and require a rubberduck that can ask questions.
“Something deemed valuable” can have many meanings to many people, but you’ll never find out what they deem valuable by mentally labelling them as a degenerate that should not be interacted with the second they say something you disagree with.
My partner has disabilities and so they do not help lift the sofa. But they are a lot better at driving a manual truck than I am, so with a few pillows and adaptations in the driver’s cab that is what they do when someone needs a sofa moved. Some disabilities prevent you from driving the truck too, but it’s important as a group of sofa movers to make sure that everyone has something they can fulfill, even if that means planning the move. That can be incredibly helpful.
Anecdotes and exceptions don’t justify the erasure of marginalia.
Like, why don’t all blind people just become famous musicians so that they can be rich? Ray Charles did it.
No one in their right mind would think that means blind people don’t require assistance/accomodations.
Your partner has disabilities but can drive a stick shift? Great. I guess the rest of us disabled people just need to bootstrap a little harder?
I think we all understand you are angry and respect that (I hope).
But saying it’s nice and good when people are helpful doesn’t imply that peiple who can’t help are not nice and good. There’s some kind of logical fallacy in that interpretation of it.
I don’t think we understand your point or how it relates to this post
Exactly. You don’t, and you’re unwilling to hear perspectives that conflict with your own, so you never will. That’s only reinforcing the erasure of already-invisible marginalia. The whole point of what I’m saying.
You better come with some jokes then. When I’m moving some bulky furniture upstairs and really not having a good time, sometimes a well-timed joke is exactly what we need to drop it and injure ourselves.
Was this supposed to be an attempt at a joke?
If you want to be included by people, try to be less of a dick.
This isn’t me talking about the wider disabled community, of which I am part of, when I say this btw, this is me talking to you.
Okay, while you’re jerking off the dicks driving big-ass little-dick trucks, I guess I’ll try being nicer to those assholes while they honk their horns at pedestrians, double-park or park on crosswalks, and all that other shit that they do and everyone knows they do because they’re doing it in big-ass trucks and it’s not subtle.
Especially the ones rolling coal and flying trump flags. Should I try to be less of a dick to them to? I don’t want to be included in whatever they’ve got going on. I certainly would never ask one to help move furniture. Their trucks are only for show anyway…
Are you in a lot of pain or in withdrawel or something? I’m struggling to understand where all this self victimising vitriol is coming from otherwise.
Yes, being disabled sucks, yes most people also suck, and everything is also fucking awful everywhere most of the time.
But this is a comment section under a lighthearted post about moving furniture, so there’s obviously something else going on that has you so upset.
Also, I don’t know what makes you say standing up for pedestrians, disabled people, and other invisible or marginalized groups makes me “self-victimizing.”
Do I find myself in some of those groups? Sure. But telling people they can’t stand up for a marginalized group if they include themself in that group is a very insidious way to put down any resistance to fascism.
Yes, of course. You’re so special and woke and this is such wonderful resistance you’re doing! Everybody needs to listen to your miserable bitching about how awful you know everyone really is, and if they don’t then it’s fascism.
Lmao, seriously are you like bpd or something? This is such attention seeking woe is me bullshit you’re pulling here, it’s really gross to watch.
Oh fuck off. The next time you hear people talk about racism or sexism you should respond the same way you’re doing now and see what that gets you.
Maybe ableism isn’t as “hot” of a topic or whatever, it’s not as sexy to discuss it as other forms of oppression, but if anything that just goes to show the disabled are even more marginalized, since apparently no one has their back and it’s such “attention seeking woe is me bullshit” to critique ableism, according to you.
And don’t pretend you’re not ableist, you literally just stigmatized mental illness, specifically borderline personality disorder, as if people struggling with that don’t already struggle enough with social rejection and low self-esteem. Genuinely, fuck you.
Of course I’m in pain. Putting aside a lifetime of social rejection, ostracization, ridicule, and derision for being different (and therefore incomprehensible to the normies who fear and hate anything they don’t understand), I’ve spent the last few years watching my country devolve into fascism.
And these “Kevins” in the world who drive these big trucks, and are willing to help out their neighbors, are not always the “good people” that this post portrays them as. Their neighbors might call them “good ole boys,” but there’s a dark side to it. Those Kevins often voted for trump, support the fascist GOP and the capitalist order, often hate anyone they view as too different.
They might accept the OOP even though he’s Asian, but if he was Black or Hispanic it might be a completely different story. If he was gay or trans it might be a completely different story. Kevin isn’t some benevolent altruist who will help anybody and everybody. I know these types of people. They might seem nice on the surface, if you’re the type of person they don’t exclude. But in order to keep their approval, if you have it in the first place, you’d better not say anything that might tip them off that you’re a liberal. You’d have to laugh off the casual racism, sexism, homophobia that they weave into nearly every conversation.
I see through this because it’s the type of people I grew up around. I’m telling you, they’re not nice people, even if they seem like it to their friends and neighbors. Anybody can treat their own friends and in-groups with kindness. Even fascists and oligarchs help their own when given an opportunity. That doesn’t make them good people.
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