Storify is shutting down in May and has informed users that we have to migrate our content elsewhere if we wish to save it. This is one of my old threads.
This thread occurred the day after the AHCA vote in the US House of Representatives, hence the references to "yesterday".
"90% of the people playing with them are neurotypical." NOPE.
Oh my god. It's official, I've seen someone explaining that fidget toys are bad because neurotypical people use them to be trendy.
REMINDER: You don't know ANYTHING about another person's health or mental state by looking.
This is one of the many, MANY reasons why it's goddamn dangerous to have Psychs out here diagnosing Trump like they aren't full of shit. Everyone and their dog think they can "tell" what a person has and is and needs, and so now fidget toys need to be illegal in schools, OBVS.
"A few bad apples spoil the bunch!" my mom used to say when I'd explain why it's not okay to remove protections for people in need. Great bumper car sticker! Terrible, evil, inhumane policy guide!
@SisonaCR: Here's a take: we want them to be trendy for neurotypical people because it drives down the costs for people that need them
YES. I said something similar in my thread on oranges.
@LouisatheLast: Like. What is wrong with neurotypical people using them??
Literally nothing, but it's a way to ban them for being "novelties" if you declare everyone a trendster.
Gonna drape a big banner here that disability gatekeeping is as collaterally harmful as queer gatekeeping. "People use them and then they get banned!" Neurotypicals want to ban them anyway. They're just using "trendsters" as an excuse.
Not everyone going "that seems cool, I wonder if it'd help me" is abled, y'all. How am I having to explain that after yesterday? We can LOSE HEALTHCARE FOREVER if a doctor wrote "ADD" on a form somewhere, so we're not all clamoring for an official diagnosis.
Yesterday! Were we not all here yesterday!? ADD is a preexisting health condition! I just.
*stalks into the desert*
*buries my face in a cactus*
*screams*
STOP GATEKEEPING QUEERNESS AND DISABILITY. YOU ARE GETTING PEOPLE KILLED.
The collateral damage of every queer and/or disabled person we gatekeep out "just to be safe" has an actual cost in blood. And I guaranfuckingtee that the government wouldn't treat us better if we just chase the "trendsters" out. So we're killing queer and disabled people for NO BENEFIT TO OUR COMMUNITY WHATSOEVER. Why? Why? Stop.
Can you not imagine a world in which you direct anger at the government and principals harming us? Are the "trendsters" (who may well be one of us!) the only people you can reach with your anger? Dream higher! Aim higher! The people to blame are the ones banning fidget toys, not the ones using them. I can't say it any clearer than that.
I'm gonna fucking screech at ANYONE who tells me a kid in 2017 has to make a disability paper-trail. WERE YOU NOT HERE YESTERDAY. Disabled kids' lives matter more than an abled kid being inconvenienced. Don't @ me. Sit on that and THINK what I said.
I don't WANT abled kids to be inconvenienced or distracted. That's not GOOD. But we're in a reality where paper-trails KILL disabled kids. In any moral system worth its salt, LIVES matter more than anything else because they aren't replaceable.
Disability paper-trails in 2017 will be issued to deny coverage and kill kids. That is something to be avoided at ANY non-lethal cost. So why is it moral to want Timmy to die so that 29 other kids won't risk distraction in algebra?
"Distraction is bad!" YES. IT IS. Is it worth Timmy dying over? Timmy can't be replaced.
"It's not fair those kids might have to retake Algebra!" NO. IT'S NOT. But that's a fair sight better than a disabled kid dying.
Challenge our ableist upbringing that teaches disabled lives and bodies are acceptable casualties to abled people's comfort.
And, YES, I am going to be a fucking bitch about this, and YES, I have done a teaching stint before anyone asks. I've also been a disabled person in classes and REPEATEDLY denied my learning aids because they were "distracting" to other students. Including IN COLLEGE. I was denied a laptop to take notes on because it "distracted" the students. (As far as I could tell, it didn't. Considering that several of the teachers were convinced I was playing games--despite CLEARLY TYPING--it seemed more a power status thing.)
But even if every student in class was drawn like a moth to an LED screen, I still deserve my disability aids. Too many people--including, yes, some disabled people--value abled lives over disabled ones and fuck that shit. Fuck on out of here.
And, seriously, again, were folks not here YESTERDAY? This is what kills me. Liberals who are totes on my side about how I don't deserve to die, then blithely explain why disabled kids need to out themselves in 2017. That piece of paper that says "ADD" doesn't make their stim toy LESS DISTRACTING, so you STILL have to manage that in your class.
All that piece of paper does is (a) kill a kid, and (b) limit the stim toys to kids willing to risk death for them. You aren't my liberal ally if you can't fucking understand why forcing disabled people to sign a death-paper for their learning aids is bad. No, not even if you're disabled. I'm from TEXAS. Do you know anything about our governor? Yeah. Shoo.
@leeflower: Bear in mind that ADHD and Autism go massively underdiagnosed in girls and children of color. Demanding a diagnosis is discriminatory.
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