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(Image from the 1977 504 sit-in.)

Welcome to the first weekly disabled community discussion thread for the week of 10/28/2024 — 11/3/2024.


This community is brand new! Everyone is welcome to post new topics and comments. However, we ask that in order to participate in the weekly megathread, one self-identifies as some form of disabled, which is broadly defined in the community sidebar:

"Disability" is an umbrella term which encompasses physical disabilities, emotional/psychiatric disabilities, neurodivergence, intellectual/developmental disabilities, sensory disabilities, invisible disabilities, and more. You do not have to have an official diagnosis to consider yourself disabled.


Disabled people in the U.S. today experience a poverty rate of approximately 30 percent; comprise 40 percent of the total homeless population; have an active labor market participation rate of less than 20 percent, despite self-reporting a preference to do so at a rate well over 60 percent. Hundreds of thousands of disabled people remain today living in institutional or carceral environments, such as nursing homes or prisons, where conditions tend towards the cruel or barbaric.


Thus, when we ask the question, what is disability, we are not really providing a full answer if we only talk about physiology, biology, or even identity reduced to a cataloging of manifest limitations or functional deficits. In fact, disability – or, to put it perhaps more accurately, disablement – is a dialectical phenomenon arising from existing political, economic, and social relations in society.


While variations in human bodies, minds, and behaviors – up to and including those traits which might be termed ‘impairments’ – have always been an indelible and essential aspect of the human species, disability as we have come to understand it in the modern era is neither eternal nor transhistorical.


The notion that a group of people – with a vast array of completely different traits, capacities, morphologies, and phenotypes – could be lumped together and labeled according to their relative lack of generalized “ability,” in the abstract, is in fact endemic to the particular period of more recent human history signaled by the emergence and dominance of the capitalist mode.


Specifically, what is the relationship between disabled people and the working class, as such?


... we should hold an expansive conception of disability, which understands it both in terms of class location, but also more generally as a phenomenon less immediately relevant to the positions of the classes than to the processes intrinsic to the relations of the classes. In other words, centering the analysis of disability on the processes of labor commodification, exploitation of labor, market competition, and class division.


Put differently, the conditions that reproduce the division of society into separate classes, and in particular, reproduce that class of people whose lives are wholly determined by the commodified value that their labor power can purchase on the capitalist market, are the same conditions that reproduce a subclass of people whose very existence is diminished and devalued according to the relatively diminished and devalued worth of their labor power as measured by the logic of commodified market competition.


Insofar as the value of commodity labor power under capitalism is both a creation and a measure of the rate of exploitation obtaining in the market – that is, the rate at which capitalists can competitively extract surplus value from the productive labors of the working class – then the simple realities of human physiology, let alone the complex realities of biopolitics, mean that there will always be and must necessarily be a constant proportion of the working class whose commodified labor power manifests as a “disability,” with the attendant forms of oppression concomitant thereto.


The struggle against disability oppression should be seen as innately allied with all other struggles born of – and against – capitalist oppression. Specifically, disablement is a form of oppression arising from the system of exploitation of labor, and therefore the historical struggle of the working class against exploitation.

from Keith Rosenthal of Tempest Collective


Mask up, love one another, and stay alive for one more week.

205 comments

  • btw mod positions are still open (and probably always will be). if you want to be a mod just dm me with your matrix account and/or leave a comment on the post calling for mods which is pinned to the top of the comm. ofc the only requirement is that you identify as disabled and that you are a socialist.

    also i’d be especially stoked if any disabled poc are interested in modding, we’ve got to keep the white people in check

  • I'm very happy this com exists! I have been disabled since I am 20 and there is only so much I can discuss with my abled friends.

    In particular, I am stuck on how much more ensnared I am into work-insurance than a lot of my comrades. My risk tolerance is much lower because people with my condition do not receive adequate care in prison and losing my job due to a night in jail means losing access to vital medication. At the same time, I have so much pain and difficulty feeling impotent as a result.

    • I was this way with the 2020 BLM demonstrations in my city. My partner went, but I didn’t, because from experience a night in jail/any institution = I do not get medication I need to live, and it ate me up for so long. It still does. This is to say nothing of how negligent everyone — everyone — is about masking for COVID risk in every current movement, a contradiction I still have not quite figured out how to broach with any success.

      As for feeling impotent, well, the way I see it is that information has always been my strong point. Information, connections, and assistance. Forgive the cringe Disney reference, but Kim Possible can’t do her thing without Wade; that will be my contribution, and it is as valuable as any other.

    • Losing access to medication, even for a day, can be dangerous, and something like a concussion or long Covid could make my condition even worse. Plus I'd lose my Social Security if I were convicted of anything. (I'd also lose my Social Security if I took a volunteer position that they could decide should count as a job.)

      At the same time, I have so much pain and difficulty feeling impotent as a result.

      I struggle with this a lot. To add to what @Ivysaur@hexbear.net said - here's a chart from Devon Price's Unlearning Shame that I've been thinking about a good deal lately. (Although I have mixed feelings about the book as a whole, at least it addresses one of the major psychological consequences of my disability - that constant feeling that I'm never doing enough.)

      CHANGE-MAKING “CHARACTER CLASSES”

      • I feel you on Long Covid. I cannot explain to most people that I'm going to wear a mask for the rest of my life because LC symptoms have so much overlap with Bipolar and ADHD symptoms and I'm barely hanging on as it is. If the two conditions compounded or multiplied each other I wouldn't be able to function at all. It's like trying to explain rocket science to a horse.

        Whenever folks express dismay that they can't do cool activism stuff on the front lines i try to remind them that an army marches on it's stomach and there's lots of logistics things that need to be done that don't involve marches and protest camps. Handling phones, making food, taking care of kids, coordinating intelligence, teaching classes and sharing expert knowledge. Many people can fight for a cause in ways that go beyonf the highly visible stereotypes of what protesting looks like but our society makes people think they're useless if they can't play tennis with tear gas cannisters.

    • I feel that. Bipolar Disorder puts hard limits on my activism. Spending months in pre-trial detention would be very bad for me, and even a few days could cause severe problems, and I always have to carry that around when deciding what I can and cannot participate in. It makes cops even more frightening than they would otherwise be.

      It also highlights how prison is a threat and a coercion to keep people in line. Knowing that if the pigs decide to come down on you, you'd be subjected to defacto medical torture. : p

  • And now I unveil my grand plan behind creating c/disabled — so I can have a space to chronicillnesspost somewhat on-topic

    • Neurologist asks, "Do you keep a headache diary?"

      "Sure thing, doc, it's right here on hexbear dot net."

      "This is ... this is just a picture of a pig shitting on its own testicles."

      "Oops, sorry, that one was for the billing department."

    • Hehe hope that you will still chronic illness post in the trans mega too.

      Think it really helps for non disabled folks to see us too, and I didn’t realize my disability until after I realized my transness!

    • Hell, that's the first thing I thought of when I saw you suggest it. We need a place to effortlessly post, not just effort post!

  • i've gotten overwhelmed and immensely disgusted by how no one cares about covid, especially family who will mention new, bizarre symptoms and immediately ponder "why is everyone so sick now." yet i'm supposed to want to go to holidays with them when i already had trouble connecting with them in the first place.

    • I believe at this point everyone knows. I do not buy the ignorance cope after nearly 5 years of year-round everyone-is-sick-what's-going-on. It is very different from a generalized ableism that so many of us are used to, I think. I am still formulating what my life in a world like this looks like, because I do not think we are ever going back to 2019.

    • Trying to decide if i want to do any holidays this year. Last year i wore a mask inside at all times and had an air purifier in the sleeping room, and i didn't get much pushback. But I also caught covid for the first time this summer and fortunately got away with only a mild persistent cough so idk if i want to risk it or not. : (

    • The Anglo is chosen by nurgle. By papa nurgles blessing we claimed this land and he continues to favor us with his gifts. It is your patriotic duty as an American to wallow in filth and toxins.

    • I think there's two key components:

      1. Covid doesn't have a telltale symptom that screams "you definitely have the Rona." The closest was the inability to smell, but I think that was for the earlier variants(?). By telltale symptom, I mean something like your forehead starts growing a nasty tumor or your skin color turns fluorescent green or your stool glows in the dark. Except for the inability to smell, every other symptom is just a generic "I don't feel so good" symptom. This is why "it's just like a flu" is so pervasive. Because for a lot of people, it really is just like the flu as far as their symptoms are concerned.
      2. The plague rats are pervasive enough that it's impossible to pin down who exactly infected who. If someone got Covid, it's legitimately hard to know who actually gave them Covid. Maybe if they're a complete self-sufficient hermit who only has contact with the same person once a month. But if they have a day job surrounded by plague rat coworkers, they basically can't tell who gave them Covid. This means that the plague rat's conscience is always completely guilt free because no one can definitively prove that the plague rat's criminal negligence infected other people. Like the Covid positive plague rat could cough into some person's face and infect them with Covid and the plague rat will always have an excuse "I didn't give you Covid. How do you know it wasn't the mailman or your coworkers or the cashier at Walmart or the person next to you pumping gas at the gas station or blah blah blah." Always an excuse to worm their way out of culpability.

      So, now we're stuck in a situation where most people are half in denial whenever they have Covid because they don't have a nasty forehead tumor but since they can't be socially ostracized for infecting other people, they don't give a fuck.

      "I didn't have Covid. It was just the flu. Never mind that I repeatedly coughed in your face. See, you getting Covid doesn't have to do with me because I got the flu, not Covid. See, even the take home tests that's notorious for the amount of false negatives say so. You probably got Covid from your coworker who also repeatedly coughed in your face. Why do you have to be so paranoid and weird about it?"

      And when you confront your coworker, they give the same exact response. Nobody wants to accept responsibility.

  • I grew up with undiagnosed ADHD. My kid presents very similar to me. When they got diagnosed by a neuropsych, their case was described as “severe”. I have no idea if that’s a clinical distinction, but seeing the school refer to their ADHD as “a legally recognized disability” gave me pause because I’d never considered myself disabled.

    Learning about the social model of disability and listening to disability advocates has helped me be easier on myself and give myself the rest I needed (I also have some sort of sleep disorder that’s currently being diagnosed). Basically, I’m glad this community is here. Just dumping, I guess.

    • Another one here, but likely audhd. For me it was my kid that made me see it.

    • Wait, ADHD is legally recognised as a disability where you're at? This is the first time I've heard of it as such, which is... interesting. I have AuDHD and out of the two, I have struggled with accepting the autism part because while many of the symptoms of ADHD can be managed with the right meds for most people, there isn't really a "quick fix" for autism. Up until then, I never considered myself disabled either.

      I'll have to read up on the social model of disability because I've got a lot of ableist brain worms wriggling around. Do you have any recommendations? Also, I'm glad (and rather hopeful) that it has helped you be easier on yourself because that's where I struggle with the most.

      • In the US, having ADHD entitles you to accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act, yeah. I don’t have any reading recommendations, unfortunately. The social model is pretty easy to explain the basics of, though. The medical model of disability says that the human body has normative functions and that disability is a deviation from those normative functions. The social model is more relative. It says that, while some people have impairments like difficulty walking, disability itself comes from society’s inability or lack of desire to accommodate those impairments and that some disabilities are just the result of differences, not impairments at all. So if focuses on your desired ways of functioning and then looks at the way society makes them difficult or impossible for you. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty succinct and helps to reframe a lot of internalized ableism for me.

    • I've been wrestling with going from "adhd is just a quirky thing and you need to focus" to recognizing adhd as a serious, heavily impairing disabiity. Something that recently hammered it home to me is apparently the general public, if they start college, about 50% of people will graduate.

      For people with adhd it's 5%. Five percent! That's an enormous concrete example of how much adhd causes severe problems for people!

      I'm still adjusting to the idea in many ways, but looking at adhd as a serious disability has helped me make sense of so many difficult and upsetting and traumatic things in my life. Just realizing that i was never lazy or procrastinating, but rather struggling alone against a hugely disruptive illness, has made me feel so much better about some of the worst times in my life.

      • That college statistic is wild. I knew school wasn’t designed for me. I didn’t realize it was that bad. I actually considered going back to college to finish a proper degree (I have an independent studies associates basically on a technicality). But I’d have to go to one of those schools where you take one class at a time on just a matter of a couple weeks. I’m good at speed running a course but it always puts me ahead and then I get bored. The material has never been the problem. It’s always been the class structure.

        I definitely relate to the what you’re saying about taking it seriously as a disability. I’m also very fortunate to have a partner who I practice a mutual radical acceptance with. There are days where I just feel like a lazy pos and they always pick up the slack and are understanding and I do the same for them on their days.

  • I didn't realize until this post that not being able to smell was a disability. I'm not really sure what to think or how to feel about it.

    It has bothered me for a while, mostly how it impacts eating/taste. Feel silly saying that. Anyway, I didn't realize it counted as a disability and both that classification and the actual issue are a couple things I'm trying to get my mind around, I guess.

    • I think it's really good and important that it's being more and more recognized that disabilities don't need to be totally life defining or fit in a few narrow categories. If there's a gas leak in your house anosimia/being unable to smell immediately becomes a potentially deadly disability. If you're 7'4" and unable to use most cars and airplane seats, you have to buy extremely expensive custom shoes and clothes, you can't stand upright in many public spaces, you've got a disability under the social model of disability.

      Like, if you can't smell, that's going to change how you live and may cause issues for you. Like the gas leak thing, natural gas has no natural odor so they dope it with sulphur to give it a distinct and immediately recognizable odor. So in that case you do have a disability.

      Like, "your disability is valid" is super cliche, but it is.

  • Hello. I am psychiatrically disabled and neurodivergent; I have been diagnosed with schizophrenia and agoraphobia with panic disorder.

    I will share a bit of my story:

    Since I was 16 years old, I have been interested in social movements. At that age, I started attending demonstrations and getting somewhat involved in them. It was then that I had a group of friends who were like brothers to me, although they were not involved in social change. Around the age of 19, I began to regularly go to an occupied social center, and although I didn't get too involved in the management or daily affairs of the center, I went there almost every day; I attended some assemblies and debates, but the activity I enjoyed the most was the punk concerts. It was during this time that I began to radicalize, especially after my involvement in the Indignados movement, in which I participated a lot, including assemblies; however, I realized that it had a somewhat reformist nature. After some time following this radicalization, I started to feel pursued and spied on by the police. I was about 21 years old then. Additionally, my group of friends turned their backs on me, those I considered brothers. My family forced me to see a psychiatrist due to this paranoia, and shortly after, the psychiatrist started medicating me. I began my treatment at 22 years old. Now I am over 30. Since I started treatment, things have gone from bad to worse. That’s why I plan to stop taking antipsychotic medication; I have been without a psychiatrist for several years because the public healthcare system in Spain is messed up. As soon as I can, I will suggest it to my psychiatrist in a persuasive and appealing way so that they will allow me to do it.

  • “After 15 years I am assuming you’ve built up a network” yeah buddy, my home lab 🤓

    oh, you meant trying to schmooze and brown nose your way through the worst PMC losers you could ever imagine? sorry no

    • me when somebody asks me for references and I suddenly start playing 5D chess trying to figure out who'd actually be willing to do that despite me making no effort to maintain post-working-together relationships (uh for the same reasons lol)

      • Honestly I've had success faking them. Employee refs aren't obliged to share anything other than this person knew you, worked with you, and vouches for you, afaik, so ask a friend who is really good at acting, lol.

  • The Social Security Administration thanks me for having two authentication factors and will provide me with a dead tree letter in 10-20 days that will allow me to actually use my account so I can begin the year+ long process of maybe getting SSI.

    • If I recall correctly it took me five months to be approved, and six weeks or more of that was because my doctor's office was shit about corresponding with Social Security. (I got calls from SSA asking things like "Are you sure your doctor has a fax machine?")

      So it's possible that your wait won't be a year+. Maybe it's worse these days since Covid is causing a massive increase in the number of SSI applicants, but on the other hand it looks like the application process has been simplified in recent months.

  • bit of a vent post i guess:

    in the process of applying for disability allowance... govt wants me to explain every payment into my bank account for the last few months. very cool lol, god forbid i avail of a €230/week payment and still get a bit of support from parents/friends (it's aggressively means tested). on the flip side i qualified for a bridge welfare payment while my disability app is in process, so i can get that much per week for the foreseeable few months at least. still frustrating and humiliating (working as intended).

    • It's very similar in the us. They just changed a rule that previously required you to declare meals that someone bought for you as income. It's so cruel.

  • I'm a mod???? (jk I already knew).

    Hey all I guess this is an impromptu intro for me since I did ask Khizuo if I could help mod when this comm was first created. I figured it would be my way of trying to give back to the hexbear community since it's been an awesome experience. I also thought it would be a good opportunity for me to learn more about the disabled community since I only really know my own struggles. I wanna try my best to be there for y'all.

    I'm self- and therapist-diagnosed ASD. I do not have a professional diagnosis because with the political climate currently, I don't wanna get put on a list if the scary stuff does go down. I also don't really have the money to pay for a professional diagnosis

    I also come equipped with Persistent Depressive Disorder and social anxiety. I think there's a few others but those are the confirmed ones on my list. I'm a vegan and I'm trying to get more involved with activism in that department, as well as, social justice. I'm a theory bro so when I'm not super duper depressed and not disassociating, I'm usually reading Leftist theory.

    I hope everyone is having a good day and thanks for stopping by our apparently rapidly growing comm.There are like 10 more subscribers in the last 24 hours!

  • Autism here (and probably ADHD too). I honestly feel like I have been denied adulthood. No matter how much I apply, no one even gets back to me and no one is hiring because of their absurdly high standards so I kind of admit it: I am an involuntary NEET.

    I've considered just going back to college and doing one of the few avenues this stupid country cares about like some BS engineering I'm bad at, but since it's the only thing porky wants. I have to. Oh, and on top of that I have to beat millions of people in getting an unpaid internship or else my degree won't count in the eyes of employers, AND get perfect grades or else I'll be seen as too stupid to work.

    But in the situation I'm in I only get two actual pieces of advice both of which are total dogshit.

    1. "Use your network, bro."
    • I'm poor I'm a little lacking in the nepotism department. Besides I'm 'early career' so what little networking you can squint and say is 'fair' I don't have. Besides, I've tried cold messaging people on linkedin and lo and behold none of them ever respond, probably because they're too busy to waste time with an unemployable idiot who clearly just wants to use them to get a job. Oh, and I was born and raised in a rural shithole, you don't make a lot of rich friends there even if people weren't too judgmental to even give you the time of day.
    1. "Start your own business, bro."

    With what money? Last I checked I'm not some super-talented prodigy at any skill enough to sell it myself even if I had the time to go through years of paperwork just to finally have a .00000000001% chance of having an income at all, we can't all be lucky bastards. Anyone who says this is a spoiled, privileged dipshit that never had to lift a finger in their lives.

    Sometimes I think me being poor and the rich being such staunch perfectionists is "disabling" me more than my actual disabilities.

  • As a kid I was diagnosed with ADHD and later in life began to recognize anxiety and OCD tendencies which I know many times are all related.

    I never really considered that all 3 of these things were disabilities until very recently, but the past 2-3 years it’s really become obvious how debilitating these conditions have been for me and can be for others.

    I have a partner who was very understanding and receptive to the way I am and eventually led them to acknowledge similarities in their own mental health struggles and seek a diagnosis as well.

    Now we are both extremely in tune with our various neurodivergent behaviors and working to assist each other in tough times and embolden each other in the better times.

    That all said, I’m happy to be here and looking forward to a great new community!

    💚

  • Crush reacted to a meme I sent her to set myself up to ask her out, but didn't actually answer if she wanted to go out or not

    Honestly the long wait and uncertainty probably would have broken me a lot worse a couple months ago, but I'm just going to try take this in stride. Just really want to hang out with her outside of work again since its been a while

  • Any other OCD sufferers got tips to make this terrible disease go away?

    • I wish I did. A lot of people in the OCD community recommend ERP, and I was going to try it but it didn't end up happening so I can't vouch for that. It may be something you can look into, though. I'm currently in a relatively good patch with my OCD for the first time in several years and honestly I just think it's because my chronic fatigue makes it so that I no longer have energy to ruminate the way I used to, so that's no advice. I hate OCD so much and I'm sorry you're dealing with it.

    • Meds are the only thing that worked for me (although I haven't tried ERP because of the cost). I am on a Zoloft + Abilify + Wellbutrin combo and I almost don't feel that I have it. Of course I have side effects like interrupted sleep, decreased sex drive, possibly weight gain and some hair loss but OCD is worse than those anyways.

    • Treating my ADHD did wonders for my OCD for some reason. My guess is they were playing off of each other to an extent but I don’t know how sciency that is

  • Got a referral for a specialist that my Medicaid is actually covering. Wait time for an appointment? Six months.

  • Had an interview with the shittiest company on the planet ::: spoiler spoiler It's Amazon :::

    It was the dumbest shit too. I applied for a driving position yesterday and within hours, had an interview lined up. Today was like 6 of us who interviews for holiday driver positions that are temp to hire and the dude hired us all. Very little in the way of actual interviewing. Even if it's a crummy job I actually sort of wish more people would hire this way because fucking hell, 6 people got at least temporary jobs today. Just cut out the bullshit.

    I barely even "masked" too. Just was myself for the most part. Made a comment about how I have a BBA just like him and am trying to start my own business etc etc and I guess he liked that or something. Dude is laid back for being a corpo. It's part time and temp but it's money, right? He said it's easy to do but physically demanding. I've done delivery stuff before and worked in factories. It's gonna be hell on my body but once I get into it it shouldn't be too bad.

    I have another interview tomorrow that I will need to heavily mask for, and one I'd rather do. It's IT and they love their neurospicy folks, but don't wanna hire them and don't seem to want to accommodate them etc. Basically they all love the idea of it. It's tech though. I'm good at IT, but not great. I'm fully aware of what level I stand at so I just need to try and sell myself a bit above that. It's a 4 interview process tho so fuck me regardless.

    But...

    My brother-in-law just graduated and was handed a 6 figure job at our local power company and says he knows a guy and can probably get me in as a journeyman. I'm not sure if it's a union job but this sort of thing usually is. It would be $15 an hour while I work on learning it all over the next 4 years but after that it's basically a guaranteed 6 figures and all the hours I want. I'm asking him for the contact info now actually.

    I'm at a point in my life where I probably need to figure it out, get lucky, or just give up and go find a group of people to squat with. I feel like a leech in my own family because I'm not doing anything at all.

  • So, I read a comment on youtube about cleanliness OCD, and I seriously think I have some form of that. I'm not sure if it's bad enough to warrant being called a disorder in my case, though. Will definitely be bringing this up with my therapist the next time I see him.

205 comments