Stop referring to yourself as ‘disabled’ if you are only mentally ill

the-real-seebs:

iamatinyowl:

You are not disabled. You are an able-bodied person that benefits from ableism. You can physically accomplish everything that physically disabled people can’t. Stop using your mental illness as a way to completely dominate disability discourse.

Yes, people with mental illnesses are discriminated against, but let’s not pretend for a second that showing up to a job interview while suffering depression is anywhere near the equivalent of showing up to a job interview in a wheelchair.

As someone that has both severe mental illness and severe physical disabilities let me tell you: there is an enormous difference between not being able to go get groceries because you emotionally/psychologically can’t and because you physically cannot.

The word you are looking for is neurotypicalism. Not ableism. Unless you’re suffering from a mental illness that physically damages you, you are able-bodied. You do not deal with the same exclusion, erasure or silencing that actually physical disabled people do.

I have days, and weeks where I cannot get out of bed and that does not make my disabled. What makes me disabled is my literal, actual fucking disabilities. I’ve suffered from severe mental illness since I was young, but until two years ago I was not disabled. I was mentally ill. Learn the difference and please stop dominating disability discourse and harassing people who are actually disabled.

This is total bullshit. Like, complete, total, bullshit. I don’t think anything in it is actually true.

Disability discourse has historically been dominated by this attitude, and that’s a big part of what exacerbates disabilities that mostly involve brain function.

You say there is an “enormous difference”, but you know what? Many other people who also have both of those do not think that difference is enormous, or significant even. You are not the absolute arbiter of everyone else’s experience.