Newsflash buddy: Typical doesn’t make you special

I'm just going to jump right into it: we, as a society, need to stop treating visible disability like it's an eyesore; like it's a deviation from the norm, when the numbers show that that notion is far from true. Disability ranges from physical to mental to cognitive and since a good chunk of humanity exists in one (sometimes more) of those states, I posit that the idea of "normal" or "typical" is garbage.

Stop looking at visibly disabled people with pity in your eyes when you've got glasses on and are half blind without them. When you're so depressed some days you can barely get out of bed. When you're in chronic pain. When your ears are ringing constantly. When your nervous system is permanently disrupted. When you're on medication for one thing or the other. You too are disabled, babe. It's not only when your limbs don't work as expected that it counts, because in case you weren't aware, your limbs aren't the only things that constitute your human makeup, every part of you makes you human so if one part is off, if one part of the whole doesn't work the way it's supposed to and it affects your life in a material way, guess what? It's a disability.

"God forbid! I'm not disabled in Jesus name!", you proclaim with vim

Oh? What's wrong with being disabled? Does God love disabled people any less or do you think you're special for not struggling with something? Tell me what makes disability, a permanent state for a lot of people, some of whom you know and love, so horrifying. Why is the idea that you too are disabled so daunting to you? It's because you think you're better than a disability, isn't it? Aww, sweetie. That's ableist. Stop it. Disabled people aren't subhuman, and they aren't superhuman either, like some of you well-meaning but misguided people tend to think, disabled people are just human, like you, like me. Also, they're not angels either, they're allowed to be annoying, aggravating, frustrating dickheads, just like you, not me though, I'm an angel. The expectation that a person who is marginalized within the society that we live in must also perform perpetual niceness is not only oppressive, it is dehumanizing. You're basically asking them to sing for their empathy, to tick all the boxes before you can see them as deserving but that's a different topic for a different day.

Point here is, if I started condescending to and infantilizing you based on something you struggle with, you'd quickly get away from me. Yet, a good chunk of you people often jump in to assist perfectly capable people with a task they didn't ask to be helped with, just because they have visible disabilities. Sometimes you exclude them, even when they ask to be included because you have determined that they are not capable. I don't see your medical degree anywhere, yet here you are, making proclamations you are sorely unqualified to make. I'm not judging you, if you feel judged that's okay but that's not my intention. My intention is to point out to you how ridiculous you're being, especially as a human being who will age and INEVITABLY become disabled in some way. Old age is debilitating and disabling in a lot of ways, so we're all heading towards unavoidable disability. Before you argue with me, if you're over 30, do 50 jumping jacks right now without stretching. Exactly. Aging is a slow march towards disability but usually, while your physical body deteriorates, your brain stays intact and you're sharp as a tack. If you look at it from that perspective, it makes sense that old people are ornery and annoyed all the time. Why wouldn't they be? They were here first, yet we treat them like children, discount their opinions and make blanket decisions for them while they are in the room and perfectly capable of making their own decisions! (Obvious exceptions made for anyone in cognitive decline, of course)

Grandpa isn't as nimble as he once was, so you extrapolate that to mean that his brain is also functioning at the speed of treacle because he's old. Grandma doesn't get down like she used to, she uses a wheelchair now, so obviously your conclusion is that her brain must also be in the wheelchair. Do you not see how rude that is? How dehumanizing? A person is still a person, despite how differently they function. A disabled person is deserving of all the respect you would accord yourself and any other person, no matter how much they shake, fidget, stim, avoid eye contact, mumble and miss social cues. Still a person, not a project. Stop it. That's all I have to say.

Nope. I have one more thing. And since we're here, talking about what happens when you decide disabled people are less than — let me address the logical endpoint of that thinking:

FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS RIGHT AND GOOD, VACCINATE YOUR CHILDREN!!!

Vaccines do not cause autism and even if we all pretend for a moment that they did; you're telling me you'd rather have a dead child than an autistic one? Why didn't you just get an abortion then? Exactly. The notion that a child you carried for 9 months would be better off dead than autistic is completely insane and you propagandists should all be locked up. Shut all the ups and go to jail. I said SHUT UP. Good day!

For the longer essay on what the fashion industry owes disabled bodies — and why adaptive design is a market failure, not a charity case — find it on Substack.